A Glazed Ceramic and Silver Coupe
Fully glazed ceramic in tones of green, blue, red, brown and grey, with
silver mounts.
4 in. (10.2 cm) high, 10½ in. (26.6 cm) diameter, 14¼ in.
(36.3 cm) over handles.
The ceramic base with painted mark "M.D 1912"; the silver rim
and base each stamped "GHISO" and with French "Mercury"
hallmarks signifying 950-fine export silver.
The flattened center (7 cm diameter) of the bowl is modeled in shallow relief with the rings of a purplish blue blossom tinged with red. From the center, deep bluish green leaves with black veining and bright green buds radiate on the sloping walls, and black stalks bear six similar circular purplish blue blossoms modeled around the rim, all against a grey-white craqueled ground with an overall "pebbled" effect from sprinklings of the ground color. The outside wall of the bowl is glazed in brown, beige and buff tones suffused with green. The base has a glazed and craqueled buff ground and is signed in blue with the artist's initials and the date.
This coupe reveals the dynamic passage from Art Nouveau to Art Déco
around 1910-2, in which the pale tones and naturalistic forms of Nouveau
were supplanted by the vibrant fauvist colors, stylized and geometricized
design and monumental symmetry of early Déco. Maurice Dufrêne
was a founder member of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs
(1900) and among the group of French designers whose work vigorously adapted
to the birth of Déco before the First World War. From 1912 he taught
at the École Boulle; one of his students was Charlotte Perriand.
After the war he became the first artistic director of La Maîtrise,
the design studio of Galeries Lafayette, thus personifying the collaboration
between Déco and the leading Parisian department stores. Indeed,
his influence as designer, teacher and writer was such that he was the editor
of the monumental three-volume work Ensembles Mobiliers / Exposition
Internationale 1925 (Paris, 1926). The cross-fertilization between
design as high art and designer luxury goods (a central tenet of Déco)
appears in this coupe inthe silver mounts by Ghiso, the Parisian and Buenos
Aires firm founded by Miguel Ghiso and continued by Alberto Ghiso, designing
principally
custom-made jewelry, silver items, timepieces and other luxury objects in
high Déco taste.
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Price: $3,000
Inquiries: mail@mobysnewt.com